Este trabalho discute o papel do pensamento analógico e da afetividade na atribuição de significados e compreensão de conceitos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem em Matemática sob a perspectiva teórica. O uso de analogia em educação coloca em evidência relações estruturais entre elementos similares de domínios diferentes, enriquecendo o entendimento dos conteúdos abordados. Neste contexto, estudou-se a Heurística e em particular o caráter heurístico da analogia em resolução de problemas, o que releva ainda a relação entre tal forma de raciocínio e o conceito de similaridade em atribuição de significados no universo educacional matemático. Por fim, o presente trabalho teorizou o tema afetividade a partir de três constructos, a saber, crenças, atitudes e emoção, visando auxiliar ações que propiciem apreensão e compreensão dos objetos matemáticos. / This research discusses the role of analogical thinking and affectivity on attribution of meaning and understanding of concepts in the teaching/learning process of mathematics from the theoretical perspective. The use of analogy in education evinces structural relations between similar elements of different domains, enriching the understanding of concepts approached in such a situation. In this context, it considers Heuristics and, in particular, heuristic features of analogies on problem solving, which also brings out the relationship between such a reasoning and the concept of similarity in attributing meanings in mathematics education contexts. Eventually, this study theorized the subject affection from three constructs, namely, beliefs, attitudes and emotion in order to support actions that encorage apprehension and understanding of mathematical objects.

Relying on computing systems that become increasingly complex is difficult: with many factors potentially affecting the result of a computation or its properties, understanding where problems appear and fixing them is a challenging proposition. Typically, the process of finding solutions is driven by trial and error or by experience-based insights. In this dissertation, I examine the idea of using provenance metadata (the set of elements that have contributed to the existence of a piece of data, together with their relationships) instead. I show that considering provenance a primitive of computation enables the exploration of system behaviour, targeting both retrospective analysis (root cause analysis, performance tuning) and hypothetical scenarios (what-if questions). In this context, provenance can be used as part of feedback loops, with a double purpose: building software that is able to adapt for meeting certain quality and performance targets (semi-automated tuning) and enabling human operators to exert high-level runtime control with limited previous knowledge of a system's internal architecture. My contributions towards this goal are threefold: providing low-level mechanisms for meaningful provenance collection considering OS-level resource multiplexing, proving that such provenance data can be used in inferences about application behaviour and generalising this to a set of primitives necessary for fine-grained provenance disclosure in a wider context. To derive such primitives in a bottom-up manner, I first present Resourceful, a framework that enables capturing OS-level measurements in the context of application activities. It is the contextualisation that allows tying the measurements to provenance in a meaningful way, and I look at a number of use-cases in understanding application performance. This also provides a good setup for evaluating the impact and overheads of fine-grained provenance collection. I then show that the collected data enables new ways of understanding performance variation by attributing it to specific components within a system. The resulting set of tools, Soroban, gives developers and operation engineers a principled way of examining the impact of various configuration, OS and virtualization parameters on application behaviour. Finally, I consider how this supports the idea that provenance should be disclosed at application level and discuss why such disclosure is necessary for enabling the use of collected metadata efficiently and at a granularity which is meaningful in relation to application semantics.

The law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) both explicitly and implicitly requires that a determination of causation be made at a number of points. In several of the WTO covered agreements, an important part of making a determination about causation involves separating those factors that are causative from those that are immaterial to the outcome in question (this process of separation is known as a 'non-attribution analysis'). This thesis argues that there are six parts of the law of the WTO that require, either explicitly or implicitly, that a causation and non-attribution analysis be undertaken. These are: (1) Safeguard Measures (Articles 2.1 and 4.2(a) and (b) of the Agreement on Safeguards ); (2) Anti-Dumping measures (Articles 3.1 and 3.5 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement ); (3) Countervailing Duties (Article 15.5 of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement (SCM Agreement)); (4) Serious prejudice (Articles 5(c) and 6.3 of the SCM Agreement); (5) the relationship between a measure and its policy objective (Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and Article XIV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services ); and (6) the relationship between a responding Member's failure to comply with a DSB ruling and the complainant Member's level of nullification and impairment (Articles 22.6 of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes and 4.10 of the SCM Agreement). This thesis will first examine the current approach in the jurisprudence to analysing causation and non-attribution in these parts of the law of the WTO. To that end, it will suggest that there is a trend in the current jurisprudence to attempt to make an a priori inference about the effects of a cause from the nature of the cause itself. This thesis will suggest that this approach reflects a misconception of causation, and it will propose an alternative, three-part methodology for interrogating causation based on the use of econometric analysis, which has been developed from guidance given by the Appellate Body in US-Wheat Gluten.

Este trabalho discute o papel do pensamento analógico e da afetividade na atribuição de significados e compreensão de conceitos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem em Matemática sob a perspectiva teórica. O uso de analogia em educação coloca em evidência relações estruturais entre elementos similares de domínios diferentes, enriquecendo o entendimento dos conteúdos abordados. Neste contexto, estudou-se a Heurística e em particular o caráter heurístico da analogia em resolução de problemas, o que releva ainda a relação entre tal forma de raciocínio e o conceito de similaridade em atribuição de significados no universo educacional matemático. Por fim, o presente trabalho teorizou o tema afetividade a partir de três constructos, a saber, crenças, atitudes e emoção, visando auxiliar ações que propiciem apreensão e compreensão dos objetos matemáticos. / This research discusses the role of analogical thinking and affectivity on attribution of meaning and understanding of concepts in the teaching/learning process of mathematics from the theoretical perspective. The use of analogy in education evinces structural relations between similar elements of different domains, enriching the understanding of concepts approached in such a situation. In this context, it considers Heuristics and, in particular, heuristic features of analogies on problem solving, which also brings out the relationship between such a reasoning and the concept of similarity in attributing meanings in mathematics education contexts. Eventually, this study theorized the subject affection from three constructs, namely, beliefs, attitudes and emotion in order to support actions that encorage apprehension and understanding of mathematical objects.

Student Number : 9802206M - MA dissertation - School of Psychology - Faculty of Humanities / Before this study took place, the social psychology perspective of Attribution theory was yet to be fully utilised in South African research within the maintenance error landscape. Attributional approaches see the person on the street operating like a scientist, obtaining information from his or her social surroundings and discerning the causes and consequences of ongoing behavioural and environmental events (Harvey et.al.,1976). It is very possible that due to the unique South African socio-political and economic landscape, strongly influenced by Apartheid, new combinations of known and unknown error attributions are at play, that are unique to this landscape and have not yet been studied or uncovered. Thus, a better understanding of the South African landscape, through a study such as this, could have serious cost benefits to maintenance companies, benefits to staff in terms of reduced risk of injury, as well as form the basis of improved policies, procedures and equipment. Twenty-five team leaders and 125 minor maintenance staff at a South African Aircraft Maintenance Company formed the population group from which the sample for this study was drawn. Within each group, 5 individuals were interviewed on a personal basis. Further, for each group, one focus group was carried out consisting of two and four individuals respectively. The individuals who participated in the focus groups were different to those who participated in the interviews. In total 28 percent of team leaders participated in the study and 7 percent of maintenance staff, which calculates to just over 10 percent of minor maintenance employees at the organisation involved. The Qualitative data acquired through this in-depth interview and focus group discussion process, and subsequent transcription was coded and analysed using Thematic Content Analysis. Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context (Krippendorf, 1980). The discussion of primary error attributions comparing maintenance staff and team leaders, focussed on the predominant primary error attribution theme and related attributions under the descriptor Organisational Culture which included both the dimensions of employee motivation and managerial culture. Finally, results of secondary error attributions comparing maintenance staff and team leaders raised the discussion around the theme, Tools and Equipment. This research is an exploratory study that brings together the field of attribution theory and maintenance error. Its main strength is that it provides a theoretical framework, upon which is based a methodology that explores the primary and secondary error attributions made by employees for maintenance errors in their work environment. In other words, it is felt that this methodology can be implemented in a range of maintenance environments to unearth the error attributions of staff in that environment. Information such as this is very beneficial to companies and organisations in their planning, strategising, problem solving and general organisational development.

The field of authorship attribution seeks to characterize an author’s writing style well enough to determine whether he or she has written a text of interest. One subfield of authorship attribution, stylometry, seeks to find the necessary literary attributes to quantify an author’s writing style. The research presented here sought to determine the efficacy of sentiment analysis as a new stylometric feature, by comparing its performance in attributing authorship against the performance of traditional stylometric features. Experimentation, with a corpus of sci-fi texts, found sentiment analysis to have a much lower performance in assigning authorship than the traditional stylometric features.

abstract: Reading partners’ actions correctly is essential for successful coordination, but interpretation does not always reflect reality. Attribution biases, such as self-serving and correspondence biases, lead people to misinterpret their partners’ actions and falsely assign blame after an unexpected event. These biases thus further influence people’s trust in their partners, including machine partners. The increasing capabilities and complexity of machines allow them to work physically with humans. However, their improvements may interfere with the accuracy for people to calibrate trust in machines and their capabilities, which requires an understanding of attribution biases’ effect on human-machine coordination. Specifically, the current thesis explores how the development of trust in a partner is influenced by attribution biases and people’s assignment of blame for a negative outcome. This study can also suggest how a machine partner should be designed to react to environmental disturbances and report the appropriate level of information about external conditions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

À partir du cas des attributions de logements sociaux, cette thèse s’intéresse aux questions de tri et de sélection dans l’action publique. Elle analyse la manière dont sont choisis les futurs locataires HLM et dont se construisent les discriminations dans l’accès au logement social. Elle éclaire l’émergence de critères d’attribution contraires au droit et explique leur récurrence au niveau local. L’enquête s’appuie sur une ethnographie comparée de trois agglomérations françaises et six organismes HLM. Elle repose sur des observations directes, des entretiens auprès de professionnels du logement social, des analyses documentaires et statistiques. Ses résultats soulignent d’abord la faiblesse du pouvoir normatif de l’État et discutent l’hypothèse d’une ruse de la mise en œuvre. En examinant les conditions d’élaboration des règles au niveau méso, la thèse identifie ensuite plusieurs régimes de tri des ménages en fonction des caractéristiques du contexte local et des modalités d’association entre élus, bailleurs et acteurs économiques. L’étude des pratiques professionnelles précise, enfin, les paramètres qui influencent les modalités de catégorisation des usagers au guichet. Elle montre que l’attribution des logements n’est discrétionnaire et discriminatoire que dans certaines configurations spécifiques, en fonction des marges de manœuvre dont dispose le bailleur, de l’état du patrimoine social et des comportements des street-level bureaucrats. Les régularités constatées dans la mise en œuvre sont finalement expliquées par le poids des contraintes institutionnelles et la culture professionnelle des agents de terrain. / Through the example of social housing allocations, this dissertation examines the issues surrounding sorting and selection within public policy. It analyses how new social housing tenants are chosen and how discriminations play within the access to social housing. It highlights the rise of illegal allocation criteria and explains their recurrence at the local level. The study builds upon a comparative ethnography within three French conurbations and six social housing authorities. It gathers direct observations, interviews with social housing practitioners, as well as documents and statistical analyses. Its results firstly show the weakness of the normative power of the State and discuss the hypothesis of an implementation trick. Focusing on the establishment conditions of rules, at the meso level, the dissertation then identifies multiples regimes of households sorting, depending on the characteristics of the local context and of the collaborations between elected officials, housing authorities and economic actors. Studying precisely professional practices finally allows to precise the parameters that influence sorting processes of welfare agencies’ window users. It decomposes how housing allocation is discretionary and discriminatory only in some specific configurations, depending on the room of manoeuvers of the housing authority, the state of the social housing stock and the behaviours of street-level bureaucrats. The witnessed regularities in the implementation of public policy are finally explained by the significance of the institutional constraints and of the professional culture of civil servants.

The impacts of transported and locally-produced pollutants on western US air quality during summer 2008 are studied using the multi-scale Sulfur Transport and Deposition Modeling system. Transported background (TBG) is an indicator of the influences from extra-regional emissions or the lower stratosphere. The magnitude of TBG is expected to increase as the emissions from international sources grow. This trend is especially important in the context of US air quality standards, which tend to become more stringent to protect human health and ecosystems. Forward sensitivity simulations in which the model boundary conditions and emissions are perturbed show that TBG strongly and extensively affect western US surface ozone (more than half of the total), compared to other contributors to background ozone (North American, NA, biomass burning, BB and biogenic emissions), and the impacts differ among various geographical regions and land types. The stratospheric ozone impacts are weak. The TBG ozone contributes most to western US ozone among all TBG species, and TBG peroxyacetyl nitrate is the most important species among ozone precursors. Compared to monthly mean 8-hour daily maximum ozone, the secondary standard metric "W126 monthly index" shows larger responses to TBG perturbations and stronger non-linearity to the size of perturbations. Overall the model-estimated TBG impacts negatively correlate to the vertical resolution and positively correlate to the horizontal resolution. The estimated TBG impacts weakly depend on the magnitude of uncertainties in the US anthropogenic emissions. The transport/subsidence processes that link airmasses aloft with the surface pollution level are analyzed by trajectories, time-lag correlation and adjoint sensitivity analyses. Various types of observations are used to identify source regions and transport processes, and to improve model prediction using the four-dimensional variational data assimilation during a long-range transport episode. The sectoral and geographical contributions to summertime US black carbon (BC) distributions are studied. NA emissions heavily (>70%) affect the BC levels from the surface to 5 km, while non-NA plumes compose more than half of the BC above 5 km. NA and non-NA BB, NA transportation and non-NA residential emissions are the major contributing sectors. Aircraft measurements during the California phase of the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft andSatellites (ARCTAS-CARB) field campaign show that BC/(organic matter + nitrate + sulfate) mass ratios fairly well represent BC's warming potential over southern California, which can be approximated by BC/(organic matter + sulfate) and BC/sulfate for plumes affected and unaffected by fires, respectively. The responses of BC/(organic matter + sulfate) and BC/sulfate to removing each emission sector indicate that mitigating NA transportation emissions has the highest potential for regional air quality and climate co-benefits. Contributions from NA BB and extra-regional emissions differ for summer and spring (April 2008).

There is increasing recognition that contextual aspects of social situations are important determinants of children's social information processing. While it is generally accepted that friends influence children's social behavior, the immediate influence of a friend in specific conflict situations is less understood. Contextualized vignettes depicting hypothetical peer conflict situations were developed to examine the impact of situational context, namely a friend's suggested attribution and an antagonist action cue, on students' social information processing. A repeated measures design examined the proximal influence of situational context on 4th and 5th grade students' (N=367) own intent attributions, emotional reactions, and response evaluations to hypothetical peer conflict scenarios. Results indicated that situational context is important to students' social cognition. Students adjusted their social cognition and emotion in response to cues to an antagonist's intent and were influenced by a friend's comments during peer conflict scenarios. Students' responses were more aligned with the antagonist's action than a friend's suggested attribution. However, a friends' attribution was influential in situations where it conflicted with the antagonist's action. Results of this study help to increase knowledge regarding the context of social cognition and can assist in the development of more ecologically valid social skill interventions.